The track for the hidden sidings has been laid out, cut and joined. Track pins need to be added yet (it was too late to start hammering last night!).
In other news the baby stuff from the loft has been brought down giving me a full loft to be able to measure ready for erecting Rhyd ddu up there.
And here are the two bodies made up - guard rails on, sides and floor fixed to ends. Next it's seating...
Today the first ever 009 society kit was delivered to my door. In fact two were. The kit is for the Hudson toast rack carriages (rainmakers). One of these runs in the WHHR heritage train in maroon and another alongside two more modern versions on the FR in dark green.
Tonight I made a good start on these. All the plastic parts were cut out and cleaned up (it's a new kit so the castings were crisp) and made a start glueing on the curved side guards. Good kit so far.
Also around my work bench at the moment are carrs 100 (which recently had it's roof added), 14, 24 and 2043. The latter two have had their roofs cut out of brass and curved recently.
Local to our London office is a superb model shop and I invested recently in some more tamiya paints and cleaning solution for both brushes and airbrushed.
The loft hatch project moved forward today. The previous hatch was removed, the ceiling plasterboard cut out with a jigsaw and a support (not a joist!) removed.
One board has now made it into the loft proving the new hole is big enough.
Tomorrow I will replace the trim and construct a new hatch door.
I have invested in a new soldering station. My antex was increasingly showing it’s age and will now be retired for purely electrical soldering and my cheap variable temp iron was just that, cheap and nasty so this will be filed under B for bin. The new one is provides a temp controlled iron with digital readout from 150 deg (for low melt solder) to 400 (for some serious, some might call it ‘extreme’ soldering) and 60W of power – plenty for 009!
There are a myriad of bits you can buy, but for now I have a pointy detail one and a bevel bit. I may well invest in a blade style bit soon too. So far I am very happy with the build quality and it looks to be a sensible investment at about half the cost of an ersa.
The other project is a way to avoid the damp of the garage, by moving major parts of the layout into the loft, which is boarded nicely ready. However the hatch isn’t big enough to get the 2ft wide boards up there, so I had a look tonight and discovered that widening it won’t too difficult – a weekend project I think.
